Hedge Funds on Wrong Side of Brexit

What will be the bigger loss for hedge funds, the money lost on their exclusive exit polls, or bets that are no longer in the money? The 2 and 20 crowd— they take a 2% fee per year on your portfolio and 20% of your gains—has got to be on the wrong side of this trade. All night/day Thursday the polls had Brexit as a Remain. The 2 and 20 crowd, and their leverage, are playing God with other people’s money—you know, retired teachers who have entrusted their retirement to the government who outsources that responsibility to these so-called fiduciaries. ZeroHedge quotes James Butterfill, head of research and investments at ETF Securities describing the likely outcome in markets saying “It’s scary, and I’ve never seen anything like it. We’re going to see outflows from basically any kind of cyclical asset. A lot of people were caught out, and many investors will lose a lot of money.”

The Deccan Herald reports that the referendum was the biggest political betting event in history. No doubt hedge funds made their own record bets.

The bookmakers, however, had seemed more confident about a Remain vote, and saw a flurry of late activity as the referendum became the biggest political betting event in history with an estimated 100 million pounds being wagered.

Numerous hedge funds had commissioned their own exclusive exit polls at a cost of up to 500,000 pounds, which asked people how they voted on their way out of polling stations.

The results were intended to help traders get an insight into the way the vote would go ahead of the public, with these polls remaining private.

After polls closed at 10pm yesterday, sealed ballot boxes were collected and transported to the count venue for each of the 382 local counting areas. These represented all 380 local government areas in England, Scotland and Wales, plus one each for Northern Ireland and Gibraltar.

E.J. Smith is the Founder of YourSurvivalGuy.com, Managing Director at Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd., a Managing Editor of Richardcyoung.com, and Editor-in-Chief of Youngresearch.com. E.J. graduated from Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, with a B.S. in finance and investments. In 1995, E.J. began his investment career at Fidelity Investments in Boston before joining Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd. in 1998.
E.J. has trained at Sig Sauer Academy in Epping, NH, where he completed course-work in Practical and Defensive Handgun, Conceal Carry Pistol, Shotguns, Precision Scope Rifle and Kidnapping Prevention.
E.J. plays a Yamaha Recording Custom drum set with Zilldjian cymbals. His first drum set was a 5-piece Slingerland with Zilldjians. He grew-up worshiping Neil Peart of the band Rush, and loves the song Tom Sawyer—the name of his family’s boat, a Grady-White Canyon 306. He grew up in Mattapoisett, MA, an idyllic small town on the water near Cape Cod. He spends time in Newport, RI and Bartlett, NH—both as far away from Wall Street as one could mentally get. The Newport office is on a quiet, tree lined street not far from the harbor and the log cabin in Bartlett, NH, the “Live Free or Die” state, sits on the edge of the White Mountain National Forest. He enjoys spending time in Key West and Paris.
Please get in touch with E.J. at ejsmith@youngresearch.com.
Sign up here to receive all the best content from Richardcyoung.com each week.